Irina Decheva
Born in Bulgaria, Irina Decheva is a Mexican by choice: since 2002 she has been living and teaching on the Yucatan Peninsula. Up until 2013, this pianist first worked as a piano teacher at the Yucatan Ministry of Culture and Arts at the José Jacinto Cuevas Music School before moving to the Yucatan Superior School of Arts as a piano and chamber music teacher. In Mexico she also became a member of the Orpheus Piano Quartet, with whom she has been invited to numerous national and international music festivals, including the Midwest International Music Convention in Chicago (USA), the Festival Por los caminos del vino in Mendoza (Argentina) as well as the Sofia Music Summer in her native Bulgaria. Irina Decheva is also a member of the contemporary music ensemble Sequenza Sur and the Ars Musicum Mérida Ensemble as well as being founder and director of the José Jacinto Cuevas Yamaha National and International Piano Competition in Merida (Yucatan). Decheva studied at the National Academy of Music Pancho Vladigerov in Bulgaria under Professor Dora Lazarova, who was a student of the legendary Heinrich Neuhaus. She then continued her postgraduate studies at the Tiroler Landeskonservatorium in Innsbruck (Austria). In addition to all of this, Irina Decheva can also look back on a career filled with prizes won at international piano competitions.